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Terri Gross

Fresh Air with Terry Gross, the Peabody Award-winning weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues, is one of public radio's most popular programs. Though Fresh Air has been categorized as a "talk show," it hardly fits the mold. Its 1994 Peabody Award citation credits Fresh Air with "probing questions, revelatory interviews and unusual insights." And a variety of top publications count Gross among the country's leading interviewers. The show gives interviews as much time as needed, and complements them with comments from well-known critics and commentators. Whether the topic is politics, world events, pop culture, film, the arts, or science, the opinion-makers always make time for Terry Gross. For the latest program, or to search the archives, visit here.

Fresh Air is produced at WHYY-FM in Philadelphia and broadcast nationally by NPR.

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Movie Reviews
11:29 am
Wed April 18, 2012

In 'Monsieur Lazhar,' Grief Lingers In The Classroom

Credit Music Box Films
Fellag, an Algerian comedian, plays the title character in the Oscar-nominated Monsieur Lazhar, who steps in to teach a class of middle school students after tragedy has struck their classroom.

Originally published on Wed April 18, 2012 11:36 am

Teacher movies tend to be more alike than unalike, but Monsieur Lazhar makes the familiar unusually strange. The note on which it opens is shocking, tragic: A Montreal middle school student, Simon, enters his classroom ahead of the other kids and finds his teacher hanging from a pipe, dead by her own hand.

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Health
11:37 am
Tue April 17, 2012

The Race To Create The Best Antiviral Drugs

Originally published on Tue April 17, 2012 2:42 pm

If you've ever had a bacterial infection like staph or strep throat, your doctor may have prescribed penicillin. But if you've had the flu or a common cold virus, penicillin won't work. That's because antibacterials only kill bacteria, and both the flu and the common cold are viruses. So for illnesses like the flu, doctors prescribe antiviral drugs, which target the mechanisms that viruses use to reproduce.

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Music Reviews
10:41 am
Mon April 16, 2012

Loudon Wainwright III Looks Back At His 'Old Man'

As Loudon Wainwright III says in his song "In C," he likes to sing about "my favorite protagonist — me."

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Religion
10:26 am
Mon April 16, 2012

Interpreting Shariah Law Across The Centuries

Sadakat Kadri is an English barrister, a Muslim by birth and a historian. His first book, The Trial, was an extensive survey of the Western criminal judicial system, detailing more than 4,000 years of courtroom antics.

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Fresh Air Weekend
11:42 pm
Fri April 13, 2012

Fresh Air Weekend: R.A. Dickey, Carole King

Credit Jim McCrary
Carole King was in a doo-wop group called the Co-Sines when she was a teenager.

Fresh Air Weekend highlights some of the best interviews and reviews from past weeks, and new program elements specially paced for weekends. Our weekend show emphasizes interviews with writers, filmmakers, actors, and musicians, and often includes excerpts from live in-studio concerts. This week:


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Television
9:40 am
Fri April 13, 2012

Lena Dunham's 'Girls' Navigate New York City Life

Credit HBO
Girls has been compared to Sex and the City. The characters, played by Allison Williams, Jemima Kirke, Lena Dunham and Zosia Mamet, navigate the ups and downs of life in New York City.

This Sunday, HBO premieres a new comedy series that's written and directed by Lena Dunham, who grabbed the media spotlight in 2010 with her film Tiny Furniture. She's 25 years old now, and stars in this new TV series as well.

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Poetry
7:52 am
Fri April 13, 2012

Poet Marie Howe Reflects On The 'Living' After Loss

Credit Brad Fowler / courtesy of the author

Marie Howe is the author of three collections of poetry. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.

This interview was originally broadcast on October 20, 2011.

A few years after her younger brother John died from AIDS-related complications in 1989, poet Marie Howe wrote him a poem in the form of a letter. Called "What the Living Do," the poem is an elegiac description of loss, and of living beyond loss.

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Movie Interviews
10:01 am
Thu April 12, 2012

'Chico & Rita': An Animated Film With A Cuban Beat

The animated film Chico and Rita is set in 1940s Havana, at a time when Cuban musicians were starting to leave the country and join the jazz scene in New York. It was also a time when musical styles were fusing — and changing the Afro-Cuban jazz scene entirely.

The film tells the story of Chico, one of the best piano players in Havana, and Rita, his sultriest singer. They're lovers, and eventually their migration takes them past New York to Paris — criss-crossing continents to make music while struggling to keep themselves and their relationship afloat.

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Politics
9:16 am
Thu April 12, 2012

Welfare Overhaul's Impact On America's Poorest

Originally published on Sun April 22, 2012 8:03 pm

The welfare program that operated in the United States between the Franklin Roosevelt administration and the Clinton administration offered poor families assistance with few requirements or time frames. States could enroll as many people as they wanted in the program, and the federal government would match their funds.

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Book Reviews
11:16 am
Wed April 11, 2012

'Present': For Nadine Gordimer, Politics Hit Home

Credit Photo courtesy of the author
Nadine Gordimer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991. She lives in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Nadine Gordimer's trademark characters live for politics, the Struggle. You get the feeling they would be sick to their collective stomachs if they ever even tried to bite into a gourmet cupcake.

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